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At this abandoned dock in Bilgewater, the tides, currents, location, and the many treacherous reefs along the shipping lanes had driven away every medium- or large-sized hunting vessel and cargo ship.

After years of neglect, only a few canoes whose owners couldn't afford docking fees remained. The other regulars were Bilgewater's poorest fishermen, those without seagoing ships who lived at the very bottom of the city. Risking the currents sweeping their shallow-draft, ramshackle boats all the way to the Great Maelstrom in the Serpent Isles, they rowed them here to moor. In this filthy, chaotic place, they built shacks out of a few broken planks and lived in them for a while.

There was no one in charge here...

Because there was hardly anything to be gained from this place, and without any profit in sight, no gang would waste its manpower trying to claim it.

And so,

As time passed, it became a gathering place for Bilgewater's poorest seafarers: bankrupt former shipowners, destitute old hunters, struggling fishermen, enslaved laborers, impoverished and sickly drudges, and the rotting corpses of those who had met violent ends in the streets.

On an ordinary day, the shore near the rotting black dock pilings and piers was crawling with fat dock rats in groups of three or five. Scavenging sharks surfaced among the waves, seabirds of prey circled overhead without ever seeming to leave, and beneath the ruined piers lay layers upon layers of corpses, soaked until the seawater stank of rot and was coated in pale fat. They waited there for the next high tide to sweep them into the Great Maelstrom.

And it was precisely this wretched place, which ordinary Bilgewater folk and dockside gang members alike would usually avoid even glancing at, that gave Terror of the Seas, former Pirate King